MEC offers a 600 Junior press which does not size shotshell rims and the higher priced SizeMaster press which does size rims.

What fraction of shotshell rims from a properly functioning gun damage rims such that they need resizing ?

Do some action types offend more than others, i.e., are semiautos more likely to need their shotshell rims resized than double barrels ?

Does shotshell pressure effect this ?


Have talked to a number of dealers who sell MEC shotshell presses. They all tell me that the 600 Junior outsells all other models many times over. Are those buying the non-sizing press having to discard lots of shotshell cases due to damaged rims ?

Appreciate your thoughts.

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I dunno, I've mostly used Pacific and PW 800s for my shotshell reloading. In the hundreds of thousands of shells I reloaded, just a handfull had the rim thickened enough to where they were difficult to close the action on. It's a non-problem in my experience but I'm not reloading shotshells currently so this may be out of date.

The 600 JR has a "ring" resizer that slides down over the brass (to just above the rim), the sizemaster has a "collet" resizer that squeezes the brass as the handle is depressed on the deprime/resize station.
I have both, & have reloaded for both autoloaders & O/U guns. I've reloaded my own fired hulls as well as hulls scrounged from range trash cans. the hulls I have loaded in the 600JR chamber & shoot just the same as those loaded on the sizemaster.

Eliscomin,

Interesting observation on sizing.

Thank you.

Whereabouts in East Tennessee are you ?

Have lots of family back there.

Jefferson City - about 30 miles East of Knoxville

The main difference with the collet sizer is that it operates more smoothly and with a bit less effort.

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quote:

Originally posted by eliscomin:


Jefferson City - about 30 miles East of Knoxville

That's near New Market, ain't it ?

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My house is about a mile east of "downtown" (the only stop light) New Market.

You remember the 1904 New Market train wreck that cost over 110 lives ?

Ever calculate the combined muzzle energy, Hatcher Factor, or Taylor KO of the combined two trains ?



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Not quite old enough to remember '04 (but I've lived here for the last 35 years, & know a bit about the train wreck)
Not much velocity, but a heck of a lot of mass.

My Father was born in 1897 and the 1904 New Market train wreck was one of his earliest memories.

We heard the stories about the wreck frequently when I was growning up.

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There was a general store in New Market that was audited by the IRS back umpteen years ago. That audit became a very famous story within many circles nationwide.

Seems like the store proprietor always turned in a closing inventory of $10,000 every year – never varied. This caught the eye of the IRS who immediately came down on the poor fellow. They explained that he had to do an inventory every year. Couldn't just use the same inventory number. The proprietor told the IRS that he had no idea where to even start to do an inventory of his general store.

While threatening the whole time that the IRS was going to put the old gentleman under the jailhouse for his evil ways, the IRS sent in an army of auditors to do his inventory.

After two days of counting horseshoes, digging into wooden barrels and finding rotten tomatoes under nails and soggy soda crackers, finding molded merchandise that had not been unpacked in twenty years, finding traded-in used work boots, coming onto a half-box of primers for black-powder shotgun shells, finding leather mule harness for two-horse wagon teams in the same crate as ladies dresses, finding a NIB 1903 Colt 32 in the same drawer as custom-ordered stationary that had never been picked-up – after two days without really making a dent in the process, the head IRS agent told the storekeeper that it looked like $10,000 for inventory was reasonable to him.

The unfinished audit ended and the old gentleman was never bothered by the IRS again.

Years later, in the same condition as when the audit was performed, that store sold for many times that inventory figure to an antique collector who knew he had found a gold mine. And had.


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There are lots of good old "country folks" in New market & the surrounding countryside. I do a fair amount of deer hunting on & near the Holston river, & have met some real "characters" - - great people, though. A little courtesy & some occasional venison gets me access to some very nice property.